Stephanie Whitehead – I-Thou Relationships

One of the things that we talked bout in class is the I-Thou relationship Bouber talks about. One of the things that we touched on in particular in respect to this is conversation with other people and how people demean others to “It”s. In an I-Thou relationship people communicate in a manner in which they are focused and intent of sharing their thoughts and ideas. However I find quite often that people don’t understand how to have a proper conversation with other people because they focus so inwardly on themselves that they ignore the other person and don’t really care about what the other person ahs to say. They predict or assume they know what the other person has to say and how they will react to things which is not allowing the other person to think for themselves which demeans them to the level of an “It” and the other person talks at them and doesn’t really communicate with them. They eliminate the other person from the discussion and they are essentially speaking to themselves and their own thoughts for that is what they are projecting on to the other person, which is demeaned to an inanimate object.